Coca’s haunting presence in the agrarian politics of the Bolivian lowlands
2012
Valdivia, Gabriela
This essay explores the role of the coca economy in the politics of basic foodstuff production in the lowlands department of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Efforts throughout the 1980s and 1990s to diminish the coca economy in Santa Cruz have led to a significant decrease in the physical presence of coca in the region. This paper argues that while coca has been physically eradicated, the relationships and inequalities that characterized the coca economy at its height in the 1980s and 1990s continue to haunt present-day agrarian relations and decisions in the region. Using the framework of haunting and drawing on stories narrating the intersections between the livelihood challenges of rice farmers in the province of Ichilo, Santa Cruz, regional agrarian politics, and regional-state governance conflicts, I explore how the coca economy matters to the dynamics of principal agrarian foodstuff production. While coca cultivation in Ichilo is expressly assigned to the past and modern agrarian politics are explicitly articulated as “post-coca,” this paper offers a reminder about how the coca economy continues to shape present day agrarian politics, even as it is considered “successfully” eradicated.
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